Jimmy Giuffre -- Suspensions (Gunther Schuller Orchestra) 1957

'Suspensions', by Jimmy Giuffre; orchestra (not including Giuffre, despite the photograph) conducted by Gunther Schuller. This piece was commissioned by the 1957 Brandeis University Festival of the Arts and issued by Columbia Records on long-play disc WL127.
In the album liner notes, Schuller, both a composer and a critic, discusses such 'third-stream music'-- a term he popularized, perhaps invented-- while avoiding the application of that, or any, label for the "intermingling of influences in the jazz and nonjazz [ie, classical] fields". He asks rhetorically, "[I]s this still jazz, and is the intermarriage of two separate kinds of music valid?" The ultimate answer is the listener's reaction.
About Giuffre's composition specifically, Schuller writes--
"'Suspensions' is another one of Jimmy Giuffre's attempts to compose and notate, as exactly as our inadequate musical notation will permit, music that represents his particular viewpoint on the jazz and blues feeling. In this respect, the present work is an extension of the kind of thing Giuffre has been doing for some years with his own small groups. In 'Suspensions' he has also once more used percussion, not as a rhythmic foundation and backdrop, but as an integral melodic voice [hear The Jimmy Giuffre Four, 1955, 'Tangents In Jazz', Capitol LP T634] within his contrapuntal structure. Giuffre also attempted to write for the players in an individual manner 'with which they can express themselves as they would in a solo'-- to quote Giuffre from his own notes for the Brandeis concert-- which partially explains why there is no improvisation in this work."

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Giuffre
• Schuller
• jazz
• classical
• third-stream
• Brandeis
• festival
• 1957

[superblues2009]

Thanks for this great piece of "third stream" jazz.

[khasab]

Very Rhapsody for blues

[BaronMesmer]

Splendid